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If we are to believe the central banks and governments, there is hardly any inflation, but those who regularly shop for groceries will probably come to a different conclusion. But even if the prices in the supermarket remain the same, you as a consumer have to pay attention, because it regularly happens that manufacturers reduce the contents of the packaging in order to reduce costs. Even in Japan, where the central bank's proverbial printing press is still running at full speed, consumers are experiencing this disguised form of inflation.
In Japan, the topic was recently a trending topic on Twitter, after two major Japanese companies had to raise their prices for the first time in more than twenty years. Because raising prices is not a popular measure, many other companies chose to reduce the contents of the packaging, a strategy also known as 'shrinkflation'. In this way, companies reduce the cost price of their product, without the consumer immediately noticing.
The French newspaper Le Figaro mentions a number of examples of products that have changed, but still have the same price. A chocolate bar of 55 grams that is suddenly sold as a 50 gram bar, a package with 18 instead of 20 slices of cheese, a milk carton that goes from 1 liter to 900 ml. these are all examples of shrinkflation that Japanese people have been dealing with lately.
It is no coincidence that this phenomenon is now also visible in Japan, as the Bank of Japan has been doing its utmost to boost inflation for years. With extremely low interest rates and buying up stocks and government bonds, the central bank is pushing down the value of the yen, increasing import costs for Japanese companies.
Examples of this hidden inflation can also be found in other countries. Last summer, a Extensive research, which showed that a total of more than 2,500 products had shrunk in size over the past five years, without the price falling.
Inflation in Japan: Products are getting smaller and smaller
